metro

Tampa prepares to greet Shriners

Banners, buttons and discounts will welcome about 20,000 members and their families convening in early July.

TAMPA - Before you see red, you'll see blue.

Those familiar red cuplike hats, known as fezzes, will parade through downtown atop the heads of thousands of Shriners in Tampa for the city's biggest-ever convention the first week of July.

To roll out the red carpet, the Tampa Bay Convention & Visitors Bureau is cranking out a blue and green logo, with which it will plaster downtown this month.

"Hello Shriners!" the logo says, and features the silhouette of a palm tree and the visitors bureau's logo.

The logo will appear on 1,000 business window posters. It will be on 100 street pole banners downtown and at Tampa International Airport. Pepin Distributors is making special welcome banners, posters and table tent cards for all their restaurants. The Columbia Restaurant is hanging a banner across Seventh Avenue in Ybor City.

It's all for the 20,000 people - members of the Shrine of North America and their families - who will come to town in early July for their annual international convention called the Imperial Council Session.

The InTown Map & Guide is producing a special run for the Shriners. All of Tampa's electric streetcars will feature advertisements. Hooters and the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center will add the "Hello Shriners!" message to their billboards.

Most prevalent of all will be the 5,000 buttons that will be distributed to restaurants, hotels, attractions and shops, according to the visitors bureau.

"We're trying to blanket the community to welcome this group," spokeswoman Karen Brand said.

Additionally, a Shriner-specific map with special offers to restaurants, which may extend business hours, will be drawn up. The visitors bureau will launch a Web page dedicated to the convention. Marquees will welcome the Shriners all over town, including inside TIA.

The Shriners are expected to drum up about $31-million in sales for the local economy. Their arrival might seem like good practice for Tampa in its bid to land the Republican National Convention.

But Brand said the two events "are radically different."

The Shriners will mostly split up during the four days they're in Tampa because many of the 191 temples attending will have individual events throughout the city. At one time, no more than 4,500 people are expected to be in one place.

A political convention, meanwhile, would fill the entire St. Pete Times Forum and would require a coordinated transportation plan for attendees, whereas the Shriners are renting their own cars, Brand said.

But the impact on local hotels could be similar.

Most hotels downtown are booked, Shrine representatives said, including the three main hotels members booked quickly: the Hyatt Regency, Marriott Waterside and the Westin Tampa Harbour Island, where a reservations coordinator said all 299 rooms and suites are sold out on July 1.

"We certainly expect that in downtown and in West Shore you will not be able to find a room over the Fourth of July weekend," Brand said. "But people coming to Tampa will be able to find hotel rooms."

There are still rooms available in the Busch Gardens area in north Tampa, east Tampa, the South Shore area and Brandon, Shrine and visitors bureau officials said.

Then, there's St. Petersburg, just a bridge away.

"If anyone wants to come down and stay," said Dick Jackson, housing chairman for the Shriners conference, "the beaches are wide open."

Justin George can be reached at 813 226-3368 or jgeorge@sptimes.com.